Plastic honeycombs may save disappearing bee populations

Ecologists from the University of Wurzburg have developed improved breeding methods to aid research into risks to bees. They detailed the methods in a study released in Methods in Ecology and Evolution, which involve using plastic honeycombs to rear bees in the laboratory.

Advertisement

The culprit for this decline isn't precisely known but a number of factors have been blamed. These include environmental pollution, agricultural pesticides, bee diseases, changing habitats and issues arising from bee genes. Harmen Hendriksma, beekeeper and lead author of the study, likens bee research to an "arms race", saying: "Researchers try and keep up with monitoring emerging new risks to bees. We need better ways of analysing our results."

Read next

Gallery: Plastic honeycombs may save disappearing bee populations

Previously researchers used a method known as "grafting" to rear bees in laboratory conditions. The process involved collecting tiny larvae around 1mm long with feathers, needles or brushes.

Despite the considerably skill needed to graft bees, handing the larvae would frequently result in their deaths.

Allowing honey bee queens to lay their eggs directly into an artificial plastic honeycomb means the larvae do not need to be handled to be collected. Hendriksma explains: "The artificial comb has a hexagonal pattern with 110 holes the size of wax cells. The queen lays her eggs directly into these small plastic cells.

Advertisement

Because the back of each cell has a small plastic cup, we can collect the larvae without handling them."

Plastic honeycombs are widely used by professional honey bee queen breeders, but this is the first time the technique has entered a laboratory environment. "Like many people, I'm a bit lazy and wanted to find a quicker, easier way of rearing honey bees in the laboratory. When I tried using the plastic honeycomb system I found it was just perfect," he says.

With the plastic honeycomb in place, researchers attained a 97 percent survival rate amongst larvae. Furthermore, the simplified method means that more than 1,000 larvae can be collected in 90 minutes. As well as improving the survival rate, Hendriksma hopes that the plastic honeycombs will improve the quality of bee research, thanks to the standardised method it provides.